Personal growth: Too much theory; not enough action March 22, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: achieving goals, goal setting, life, personal development, philosophy, thoughts, time management
add a comment
By Dennis Mellersh
One of the defining characteristics of many personal development programs is that they instill a feeling of a future-focused optimism in us in which we embrace the concept that there will always be ample time to accomplish what we want in reaching our self-improvement goals and potential.
But unless we manage our personal growth priorities efficiently, there actually will not be enough time.
Much time can evaporate without significant personal improvement actually happening.
This happens when too much of our available discretionary time is sucked into the theory-bubble of how to improve ourselves.
We overspend our available time reading, watching, and listening to various media about personal development.
It gives us a feeling of well-being, and that’s important.
But we can fall into a trap of having too much passive learning/study input compared with a small amount of output in our goal-directed actions.
We can reverse this tendency by taking action each day on the principles we have already learned in our self-growth programs before we spend time learning new principles and approaches.
Action first, theory later.
Realistic personal growth programs mirror life’s challenges March 10, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: life, motivation, personal development, personal improvement, philosophy, self-improvement, thoughts
add a comment
By Dennis Mellersh
As noted in the song April Showers, “Life is not a highway strewn with flowers.”
Nor is following a serious program of personal development an unbroken series of wins against challenges – there will be losses in addition to the victories.
As a concept, undertaking a reality-based personal improvement program is like starting out on an odyssey.
Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within* puts it this way: “A spiritual journey inevitably includes low valleys as well as high mountains, dense forests as well as barren deserts, plateaus and plains. This is the landscape and territory of your own being. It is all-revealing and it needs exploration. Everything you experience along the way can be a way of helping you awaken the Buddha within.”
* Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within, Broadway Books, New York, N.Y. 1997
Personal Development Ideas 